Jefferson Davis Bibliography

The best recent Davis biographies are by William J. Cooper, Jr., and William C. Davis (no relation). Cooper's Jefferson Davis, American (2000) and Davis' Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (1991), are widely available in bookstores and libraries. Also on the horizon is a biography of Varina Howell Davis by Joan E. Cashin.

The best sources for documents are the Davis Papers and the 1923 series edited by Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist (10 vols.), which prints in full many of the prewar speeches that are summarized in the Davis Papers. Davis' memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols., 1881), is poorly edited, legalistic, and contains few genuine insights about the Confederacy and the war. His wife's work, Jefferson Davis.. A Memoir (2 vols., 1890), is more lively but not completely reliable concerning dates and facts.